Personality assessment of different horse breeds trained for military purposes

Abstract

Behaviour traits play important role in horse used for military purposes. The aim of this study was to assess the personality of different horse breeds which trained for military purposes in Cavalry Detachment, Parongpong, Bandung, West Java. This study was performed on 40 trained horses which comprised of 20 Thoroughbred (Tbh), 10 Andalusian and 10 Unknown and on 25 non trained horse as control, which comprised of 5 Tbh, 15 Andalusian and 5 Unknown. The Horse Personality Questionnaire (HPQ), a 25 item rating method, was used to assess the horse personality of 3 horse breeds in two groups, by adjusting into 15 characters due to housing management circumstances. Principal component analysis (PCA) on HPQ data has identified five underlying personality components in observed horses. These were Dominance, Anxiousness, Stereotype, Liveliness, and Inquisitiveness. Further, Kruskal Wallis procedure was employed to observe the personality differences among breeds and training status. The PCA result showed that there are five principal components which explained most of the variance in the datasets (73.4% and 74.86% for trained and non-trained horses, respectively). Kruskal Wallis results showed that breed and training status affecting seven of the applied 15 HPQ characters: Apprehensive, curious, eccentric, equable, fearful, protective and suspicious. Equable, protective and suspicious traits were only affected by training status regardless the horse breeds. We conclude that the variation of horses' behaviour among breeds and training status existed.